Sunday, May 08, 2005

Scrabble - Gail Game 1

My friend Gail showed me a really nifty online Scrabble gaming service: the Pixie Pit. Scrabble is one of my favorite board games (backgammon is another), so we started up a game, and then I started another one with Lindsey. This is play-by-email, and you have 7 days to take your turn, to avoid having the game expire. Gail and I played a little faster than that, completing our first game just hours after starting:

Gail: BAIT (12) = 12

Karl: BITE (12) = 12

Gail: XI (17), XI (17) = 34

Gail - 46; Karl - 12

This was a huge blunder on my part - I totally spaced out and played BITE such that two I's were adjacent to a double letter score. X is the best letter to have in the whole game, because it forms so many two letter words: AX, EX, XI, OX, XU. It is usually easy to play X for big points on a double or triple letter space.

Karl: BUTT (7) = 7

Gail: BUTTY (10), HOAGY (24) = 34

Karl: HE (10), OD (3), AE (2), CEDE (14) = 29

Gail - 80; Karl - 48

By now I had picked up the Q, W, Z, and C, which as you can imagine aren't that great to have at the same time. I decided to make it very difficult to get to the bottom left triple word score by playing CEDE.

Gail: BITES (9), PITIES (12) = 21

Karl: EVADE (18), BE (4) = 22

Gail: EISWEIN (64), BEE (5) = 69

Gail - 170; Karl - 70

Ouch! Gail bingoed with EISWEIN, a sweet German wine, according to the Scrabble dictionary. At this point, I was behind by 100 points and didn't have a good rack of letters. I wasn't able to use the right middle triple word score, so I decided to dump the Z and open up the upper middle triple word. My reasoning was, if there were two triple word scores reachable, I stood a chance to get to one of them. So I played DOZE.

Karl: DOZE (34) = 34

Gail: AGGER (16) = 16

Karl: SLOW (21) = 21

Gail - 186; Karl - 125

After Gail played AGGER, I decided I had to use up the middle right triple word score. The best I could do was play SLOW. The benefit to this was the O in SLOW was under a triple letter score, which I was hoping to use my Q on.

Gail: AD (9), OKRA (24) = 33

Karl: QUOD (34) = 34

Gail - 219; Karl - 159

Ah, there went the upper middle triple word score. At least I was able to get rid of the Q on a triple letter score.

Gail: PARRY (30) = 30

Karl: JILL (22) = 22

Gail: LOFT (14), NO (2) = 16

Karl: LOFTS (7), UNTRIMS (83) = 90

Gail - 265; Karl - 271

At last, a bingo of my own! After getting rid of as many letters along with the J as I could, I drew a good rack including a blank. This play let me climb back into the game.

Gail: ON (2), FROWN (22) = 24

Karl: FAVE (14) = 14

Gail - 289; Karl - 285

Gail opened up the corner triple word score, but I couldn't take advantage with my letters. I could have use it up spelling EF, but then I would only draw one tile and keep the V, which I wanted to dump. I was also able to spell WEAVE through a double word score, and score 8 more points, but I decided cutting off the triple word score was more important.

Gail: SONAR (18), JILLS (12) = 30

Karl: WOMEN (20) = 20

Gail: FAVES (11), SCANT (13) = 24

Karl: OH (10), ONE (3), HOE (12) = 25

Gail - 343; Karl - 330

This is why the S is so important in Scrabble - it lets you hook other words to score more points. Gail was able to use the lower right triple word score with SONAR and on her next move, play SCANT through a double word. Argh!

Gail: AIR (5) = 5

Karl: UN (3), DOZEN (15) = 18

Gail - 348; Karl - 348

At this point, we're just getting rid of the last few tiles. I'm glad I had a letter to extend DOZE with and basically score the Z again. We are tied - talk about close! This game could be decided by who goes out first. At this point in the game, I should know the tiles Gail has. The game keeps track of outstanding tiles for you, but when the tile bag empties, it doesn't display the remaining letters anymore. It is good information to have, but on the other hand, I likely wouldn't have played something other than UN/DOZEN.

Gail: FIN (6) = 6

game over

Gail - 355; Karl - 347

I had an L at the end, so Gail scores 1 more point, and I lose 1 point. (In tournaments the usual practice is to add twice your opponent's remaining tiles, so the score could also be 356 to 348). Dang, I was planning to front hook AGGER with my L for 8 points and go out. Oh well, great game!